Exactly a month ago, I wrote about creating something (almost) daily as a habit, the creations mostly taking the form of small articles on any random topic that’d come to mind. Accordingly, I created a periodic section on this website to be populated regularly with posts that’d fit this description.

Since then, I think I’ve posted almost every day on a spectrum of topics and have managed to remain fairly consistent with the frequency of the posts, skipping just a couple or so days here and there. I’ve been really busy with other activities as well, but for once I wanted to see what habit formation can do. It makes me uncomfortable to not post something in two days and I end up writing something just to start, letting the brain do its job of figuring what to do next autonomously.

It’s really fascinating how mental processes work. Apparently, as regards to habit formation, the regions of our brain that show signs of activity when we do something as a matter of routine are different when compared to those that are active when we have to spend a lot of time making decisions. And thus decision-making is easy if there’s a set routine we’ve put in place at certain hours of the day or in certain locations. It’s the brain on autopilot.

Of course there’s a lot of research that has gone into it, and though I’m not a psychologist, I have had some personal experiences to vouch for this idea of habit formation - be it in the form of posts like this one, doing some form of daily exercise, stuff related to academics, or long-distance running. Targets don’t seem to mean much anymore so much as the routine of doing some activity, but doing it consistently.

In the corporate sector, especially in product-focused companies, employees are often told to focus more on the process rather than on the product, with the notion of the latter falling into place if the former is adhered to correctly. There are a lot of online articles covering this concept too. It does make a lot of sense once you’ve witnessed it in action yourself, and gives a lot to ponder upon with regards to rethinking everything we’ve been exposed to since childhood.

Maybe it’s time to think about things in terms of frequency of consistent activities rather than merely setting goals and trying to plan as per them.